


Slate

by sciencefictioness



Series: Reverse [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Decapitation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Just Shimada Things, M/M, Mentions of Patricide, Older Brother Genji, Reverse Age AU, Sibling Incest, Trans Hanzo Shimada, Younger Brother Hanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:41:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23257099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: He knows not all of the elders are happy to see him ascend after what he did to Sojiro, but moving against him is risky.Letting others move against him—  helping others move against him— that is easier.  More in their wheelhouse.“Hiro,” Genji says decisively, and Hanzo nods, relief flooding his features.He doesn’t always understand so easily, but he’s been parsing the unspoken words out of Hanzo’s eyes for years now.  In the lines of his face, the clench of his fists.Genji reads Hanzo like tea leaves.  Divines him like bones thrown on the ground.  The subtle changes in his breathing, his grip on his bow.  In his motion, in his stillness; Hanzo says so many things.It is only Genji listening.
Relationships: Genji Shimada/Hanzo Shimada
Series: Reverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672219
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	Slate

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Shimadacest week day seven, 'White'

Hanzo rolls into the banquet hall like a storm, his men fanning out behind him. There aren’t many people who Hanzo gets along with but the few he trusts to fight beside him are both vicious, and viciously loyal. He is bright eyed and covered in blood, katana still in hand. The scion of the Hirata clan and his lieutenants glance over, something like resignation in their eyes. Hanzo pins their leader with a furious stare, raising his free hand and gesturing with two fingers.

One of Hanzo’s men steps forward and tosses a severed head on the table, everyone watching as it rolls down the center. It knocks over cups of sake, coming to rest a few feet away from Genji at the end. 

Coming to rest right in front of Hirata Eiji, his first son’s eyes looking back at him, empty and unseeing.

Genji had been suspicious when they asked to meet him on such short notice, but he hadn’t really expected to try something like this— striking from both within and without. All the clans are testing them now, feeling them out for weaknesses, but none quite so brazenly.

Eiji looks surprised, first. Grim acceptance follows quickly, and he finishes the rest of his sake before setting the cup on the table.

“That dog of yours is certainly something, lord Shimada.”

Hanzo’s sword sings through the air, and Eiji’s head joins his son’s, gore dripping off the table and onto the floor. The lieutenants put up a fight; in any other place, against any other person, it would have been enough. 

It isn’t, here. Not with Hanzo wild eyed and hungry and aching to put them down. His men stand back and let him work. If he needs their help, he will let them know. He doesn’t, today. They watch stone faced as Hanzo cuts four men to pieces, all in the space of a few seconds. 

Genji doesn’t even bother getting to his feet. When everything has stilled Hanzo looks at him, and gives him a serious nod.

“Beautiful,” Genji says. He’s talking about Hanzo’s sword work.

He’s talking about Hanzo.

Things have gotten easier, but they are never easy.

Hanzo lifts his weapon hand and wipes his knuckles across his mouth before cleaning the blade on his clothes and sheathing his sword. He turns and looks at his men; he doesn’t say anything, but they nod and get to work. There are people they will call to take care of the bodies, but the worst of the mess needs to be contained. 

There are still a half dozen Shimada elders in the room. Genji didn’t kill them because they had no love for Sojiro, but it doesn’t mean he likes them. Doesn’t mean he trusts them. They look smug and self-satisfied, as though Hanzo’s victory is their own. It is, and it isn’t.

Hanzo crosses the room to stand in front of Genji, holding his gaze for a long moment. He looks over his shoulder towards the elders. Looks at his feet. Flexes his jaw.

“Out,” Genji says flatly. The elders’ chattering goes quiet, and they pause and glance over in unison but make no move to leave. Genji doesn’t look at them, but he speaks louder, and more sharply. “I said out. Now.”

It’s been months now, yet they still hesitate. Hanzo’s hair is in his eyes, hiding his face from view of everyone but Genji. The elders file out slowly, throwing Hanzo thinly veiled looks of disdain.

If Genji could get away with killing them all and still hold onto the clan, he would do it then and there. For many of them Hanzo is still the same skittish child bleeding at Sojiro’s feet, except they should know better, now. Hanzo is the steel that holds them all up.

Hanzo is fragile, and ready to break. 

Hanzo is something feral pressed into a corner with his teeth bared, and only Genji can coax him out. When the room is cleared of everyone but Hanzo’s trio of lieutenants, Genji gets to his feet and steps in close.

“What’s wrong?” Genji asks, low enough that his voice won’t carry. Hanzo makes a face, brows drawn in frustration. Even between the two of them, words don’t come easily. Genji doesn’t push him, doesn’t rush. Hanzo glances at the bodies his men are moving, then at the door the elders disappeared through. “Not just the Hirata clan, then.” Hanzo shakes his head, and Genji sighs. He knows not all of the elders are happy to see him ascend after what he did to Sojiro, but moving against him is risky.

Letting others move against him— helping others move against him— that is easier. More in their wheelhouse.

“Hiro,” Genji says decisively, and Hanzo nods, relief flooding his features. 

He doesn’t always understand so easily, but he’s been parsing the unspoken words out of Hanzo’s eyes for years now. In the lines of his face, the clench of his fists. 

Genji reads Hanzo like tea leaves. Divines him like bones thrown on the ground. The subtle changes in his breathing, his grip on his bow. In his motion, in his stillness; Hanzo says so many things.

It is only Genji listening.

He sinks his fingers into Hanzo’s hair and bends down to press their foreheads together. Hanzo leans into the contact, eyes closed and lips parted.

“I’ll handle it,” he says. He means it.

Hiro does nothing but second guess him, and Genji has been itching for a reason to put a knife in him. 

Later that night Genji slips into Hiro’s room, Hanzo in his shadow, and takes care of it himself.

-

Leading the clan comes easy to Genji, even mired in the inevitable upheaval that comes with killing his father and a half dozen elders. The other clans push, and Genji pushes back harder.  _ Hanzo  _ pushes back harder.

Genji isn’t afraid to send Hanzo out into the dark. He hears more in the quiet. Sees more, feels more. 

Genji sends Hanzo when there is nothing left to say.

As far as people outside the clan are concerned, Hanzo can’t speak at all. There are only a few people within its ranks who have heard his voice; there is Genji, of course, and some of the higher ranked elders. Most of the lieutenants are sure he is mute. 

_ Sojiro knocked the words out of him,  _ they joke when they think Hanzo isn’t listening. When they think Genji cannot hear. Hanzo is always listening, and Genji hears everything, but they aren’t wrong, really. 

Sojiro’s fists have molded him like clay— shaped him into something broken and dangerous. He’s a weapon. He’s a tool.

Hanzo is something to be used. It used to be agony, but he is Genji’s weapon, now. Genji’s tool. Spilling blood for the clan is all he knows, and so he does it gladly. Anything for Genji; to keep him safe. To keep him strong.

Hanzo will do anything. 

Tonight he creeps over rooftops beneath starless skies, breath fogging in the cold and his bow a comforting weight on his back. Tonight he slinks through unfamiliar rooms, everything still and calm. Rich wood floors, ornate shoji panels, antique vases. 

Tonight he stands over a rival clan lieutenant who is on his back on the floor, scrambling to get away from Hanzo, calling for guards who are bleeding out in the hall. He’s begging,  _ please, I’ll do anything, I have a family. _

Hanzo doesn’t have a family. Hanzo has Genji, and he wants this man dead, and there is nothing in the whole wide world that can stand in the way of it, now. It’s strange that they plead, that they try to negotiate, as though Hanzo will have words for them.

Genji sends Hanzo when there is nothing left to say.

He leaves him twitching on the floor with an arrow in his heart and slips back out into the night. Genji touches his face when he gets home,  _ you did so good, Hanzo.  _ Hanzo leans into it, closing his eyes and lingering in the contact as long as he dares with the elders watching. All he needs is Genji’s touch. Genji’s approval. Genji’s warmth.

All he needs is Genji.

It is nothing new.

-

The elders think Hanzo is his dog.

The elders think Hanzo is a weapon.

The elders think Hanzo is a fool, and that he is damaged beyond repair. They see flaws in the most beautiful parts of Hanzo; shortcomings in all the places that Genji falls in love again, every day. The hush of Hanzo’s voice, the scars in his skin— those Sojiro gave him, and those he wanted for his own. 

They think Genji doesn’t see the looks they give him. Think Genji doesn’t hear the things they say.

They think Genji isn’t seething and furious and aching to tear them apart. Even with Sojiro gone, Hanzo is stretched taut and ready to shatter. They can’t carry on like this. Hanzo isn’t living.

Hanzo is fracturing slowly, the weight of the clan pressing down until he cannot move at all. Genji doesn’t know what to do.

Genji knows exactly what to do. It will not come easy, but nothing ever has, and he is used to pushing through. He’ll do what he must to keep Hanzo safe, to keep him happy.

If he has to burn Shimada castle to the ground in the process, Genji won’t mourn its loss.

-

Hanzo isn’t expecting it, when it comes. He’s so caught up in the drugging euphoria of killing Genji’s enemies and sitting at Genji’s right hand and sleeping in Genji’s bed that he manages to forget it isn’t something he can have forever. That Genji isn’t something he can keep. 

It would have been Hiro who brought it up first, if Hiro wasn’t dead already. It is Akimasa instead, clearing his throat and looking at Genji in a way that manages to be condescending and pitying all at once. 

“If we’re quite done with discussing the Ungo clan, there is another matter that needs your attention, my lord.”

Genji’s face stays carefully blank, but his fingers twitch towards Hanzo, like he wants to take his hand. 

“What matter is that?” Genji asks. Akimasa sits up straighter.

“The matter of an heir, and a new alliance. I rather expected we’d have a few already, albeit of less than ideal pedigree, given the way you were prone to… gallivanting, in your teenage years. I’m sure you remember.”

He says it with a disdainful sort of amusement. Of course Genji remembers.

Hanzo remembers. He looks down and clenches his fists in his lap. The memories are burned into his mind— being too young. Coming to Genji’s bed and finding it empty. Hating his body, hating himself.

Hating Genji in those moments when he saw hickeys hidden just under the collar of his shirt; someone else’s want etched into him. Someone else’s teeth. Knowing it was something he shouldn’t need. 

Something else Sojiro had broken in him, except the things he felt for Genji were the only parts of Hanzo that fit the way they should inside his skin; the things he felt for Genji kept him together when all he wanted to do was fall apart.

Hanzo remembers laying in Genji’s empty bed with his hand in his clothes and an arm thrown over his face, breathing little sobs into the curve of his elbow as he came.  _ Anija, fuck, please,  _ shivering thighs and his fingers wet, hoping that Genji wouldn’t catch him.

Hoping that he would. They’ve talked about it since then— the wounds it left in Hanzo, abandoned and aching and so fucking alone. What Genji had been trying to do, and how spectacularly he failed to do it.

How he was happy to have failed, for once in his life. Lying to himself had never come easy, he’d said, but he tried anyway. Tried to pretend he could want something else. Someone else.

Tried to pretend there was anyone who could make him whole like Hanzo. Genji hadn’t done anything wrong, and the pain is old; it swells, then fades again. There’s no one in Genji’s bed but him, now. No one in his arms, or under his mouth. Hanzo let himself get too comfortable.

Hanzo forgot, just for a little while, that the clan still owned them both. Sojiro is gone, but they have dragons in their skin and the clan tied up in their blood until they can’t unravel it if they want to keep breathing. It’s all they know to be; Shimada, first.

Shimada, always. Akimasa continues, imperious and unruffled.

“You’re young but the other clans will only keep pushing, and it will get harder the longer you go without an heir to solidify your hold over the territory. You need a wife, and you need a son, and you need them now.” He shifts his gaze over to Hanzo, who feels it more than sees it. “Especially taking into account your brother’s… situation.”

There wasn’t room in Hanzo for the anger that should have risen, but he felt its absence well enough. The cold place in his chest where it should have simmered. There was nausea, too, rolling in his stomach. Sweat on his palms, bile in his mouth.

They want Genji to take a wife. Want Genji to have a son.

Want Genji to get married and bring some woman to his bed, all lush curves softness. Want him to fuck her— to spread her thighs on sheets Hanzo has spend hours clenching in his fists. 

Want to give her the only thing that matters to Hanzo.

Want to give her Genji.

Hanzo needs to be somewhere else— anywhere else— but he can’t find the strength to stand for a moment. His hair has fallen around his face; it always does, when he wants to hide. Hanzo is grateful for it. There’s no hiding the shocked horror in his expression. He’s breathing too fast. His stomach drops, like he underestimated the height of a jump and is falling much further than he anticipated.

The impact is going to hurt. Akimasa is still talking about finding Genji a wife— which clans would be open to alliances. Which ones have daughters the right age who Genji might find more than sufficient. Beautiful girls with good bloodlines and strong family ties.

Someone who can stand beside him with her eyes up, proud and strong and smiling wide.

Hanzo finds his feet and bows, looking anywhere but Genji. He doesn’t say anything, but no one expects him to anymore. It’s rare for Hanzo to leave a meeting before Genji; he is always the last one there, sitting at Genji’s side long after everyone else has gone.

Genji stares at Hanzo as Akimasa drones on, a hand splayed on the table, fingers tense like he’s digging them into the wood. He wants Hanzo to look at him. Wants to say something without words; something he can’t say aloud with all the elders there, watching and waiting and plotting out Genji’s whole life piece by piece. Whatever Genji wants him to understand is going to be more than Hanzo can bear right now. He doesn’t meet Genji’s eyes.

Hanzo bows deeper, turns around, and leaves the banquet hall. He’s not paying attention to where he’s going, and lost in thought, his feet carry him instinctively to Genji’s room. He’s halfway through the door and ready to crawl into Genji’s bed to hide when he realizes what he’s done. Hanzo lifts a hand to grab the door frame, eyes wrenched shut and head hanging low. Genji’s futon is in the corner, piled high with too many pillows and blankets. They smell like Genji.

They smell like Hanzo.

It’s the only place he’s ever felt safe, but he doesn’t belong there.

He’s never belonged there. There’s white noise roaring in his ears.

Hanzo turns and heads down the hall to his own room; he sleeps there sometimes, when Genji is busy long into the night and the noise of the elders and lieutenants and the clan’s business partners are too much for him to bear. No one will come into Genji’s room uninvited if he’s there, but it would be strange to find Hanzo alone in his bed. When Genji gets ready to sleep he usually comes to fetch Hanzo. A hand on his face, fingers in his hair, _ Hanzo, it’s late, come to bed with me.  _ Hanzo shuffles down the hall after him and settles contentedly into Genji’s arms, sleep claiming him again so fast he often barely remembers moving.

It’s something he’s taken for granted. Something he should have been treasuring. Hanzo has been so grateful to finally be able to breathe without Sojiro lurking on the edges of everything that he let himself get complacent— in Genji’s arms, in Genji’s bed. Hanzo crawls into his own and pulls the blankets up over his head, curling in on himself as tightly as he can. 

Hanzo thinks of some beautiful girl sitting at Genji’s side at the banquet table. Thinks of him smiling, laying his hand on hers. 

Thinks of how she’ll be whole in ways that Hanzo is broken.

The tears come quietly, a skill born of practice. Hanzo puts his face in his hands in the darkness under his covers, throat tight and eyes aching. He lets out shuddering little breaths. Lets himself grieve. Losing Genji like this hurts more than anything has; at least with his father, he could drift away.

There is no drifting now. Hanzo is brutally, ruthlessly present in himself. 

He doesn’t hear Genji come into his room, but he feels him sliding into bed behind him, tugging the blankets down off his head. Hanzo tucks his face into his elbow and tries to resist, but it’s useless. Genji touches him, urges him to turn over, and Hanzo yields. Goes easily, curling up into Genji instead, even if it will hurt to listen to the things he has to say.

_ I don’t have a choice, Hanzo. I have to do this. I’m sorry. _

“Hanzo,” Genji says, trying to coax his face up, voice low and frantic. “Hanzo, look at me. Please.”

Hanzo shakes his head, shame welling up in him and overflowing. He is already pathetic enough without Genji looking at him. Genji brushes his hair away from his face, wiping Hanzo’s cheeks with his thumbs.

“Please, just listen to me, okay?”

_ “Don’t,  _ anija,” Hanzo whispers. He doesn’t need to hear it. He already knows.

“I’m not going to marry some girl for the clan, Hanzo. I’m not.” Hanzo goes still but doesn’t lift his face. His heart beats wild against his ribs. It feels like shock, the way he floats out of himself; like he’s taken a bullet, or a knife. “I don’t want anyone else. I don’t think I can… be with someone else, anymore. Just you, okay? There is only you. You are all that matters.” Hanzo shakes his head again— Genji  _ doesn’t  _ have a choice. The elders are right.

The other clans will never stop coming for him, but they would slow down if he had a wife, had an heir. It would take too many words to say everything, but Genji doesn’t need to hear it, either. He knows.

He has to know. 

He shakes his head, though. Keeps trying to gently lift Hanzo’s face, and after a few moments he lets him, skin flushed from crying. Tears are still tracking down Hanzo’s cheeks, and Genji wipes them away, wide eyed. His expression is so earnest. Hanzo can only remember him looking like this one other time.

The night before he killed Sojiro,  _ don’t worry, Hanzo. _

_ Everything is going to be okay. _

“Fuck the clan. Fuck the elders. Fuck  _ everyone,  _ alright? There’s you, and me, and I don’t give a shit about anything else. Just give me some time, and we’ll… we’ll go, okay? We’ll leave. We’ll run. It won’t be easy but when has anything? Just let me finish getting things ready so we have a chance.”

_ Finish  _ getting things ready. Finish, because he’d already started. 

Genji all wide-eyed and earnest, and then he put a sword in their father until he was nothing but meat.

Genji all wide-eyed and earnest, ready to take Hanzo somewhere far away and leave everything else behind.

Hanzo breaks, like he’s broken a thousand times, shoving his face into Genji’s chest and sobbing against the beating of his heart. Hanzo knows what it will take to get free of the clan— the lies, and the blood, and the violence. Genji will do it without hesitation. Anything.

Anything for Hanzo.

His hands are shaking as he wrestles his clothes off, just enough to tug Genji on top of him and let his thighs fall wide.

“Please, anija,” he says, ready to beg, except Genji doesn’t make him anymore. There is no more pretending. They want what they want, and they take it.

Sojiro taught them that.

“Hanzo,” he says, pressing into Hanzo slowly, sighing like he’s come home after a long time away. Hanzo is still crying, shivering all over.

Genji fucks him slow. Fucks him hard.

Fucks him ragged, again and again. Until he’s dripping Genji’s come, cunt aching with it. Until all Hanzo can do is whine, and shake. 

They stumble back to Genji’s room in the dark, slipping through their own halls like assassins, crawling into Genji’s bed. It will be a while before they can go, and Genji is right.

It won’t be easy. It’s better that way.

Hanzo doesn’t know how to handle easy, but he knows how to push through the agony until it stops.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me nice things! This whole week of prompts was a labor of love and hearing good things about it is always so rewarding!


End file.
